‘Yes! I’m sorry!’
I picked up the envelope, shoved the cards back, closed the hanger, twisted the lock randomly a few times, rehung the jacket on top and placed it back among the row of clothes in her closet. Big Aunt’s faint perfume of lilac was everywhere. Did she miss me too? I stuck the envelope, my clean clothes and a thick cardigan in the bag I’d brought, and went into the sitting room. Ah Yee had laid out writing paper, envelope and pen for me to write to my parents.
This was what I wrote:
Dear Father and Niang,
I am very sorry that I made you unhappy last Friday. I should have told both of you that I was spending the night at Big Aunt’s fiat when I phoned on Thursday afternoon. I apologize for my rudeness to you, Mang, and for biting you.
I go to school every day as usual. However, I miss Ah Yee’s cooking and the comforts of home. Big Aunt has only one bedroom and I have to sleep on the floor.
Please tell Ah Yee to let me know when I can come home.
Your daughter
Xian
I read the letter out loud to Ah Yee. She knew a few characters but had difficulty reading books or newspapers. ‘Don’t look so worried!’ I said to her. ‘I’m staying with Grandma Wu at the Martial Arts Academy and learning kung fu. The address is 2200 Avenue Petain. Big Aunt knows where I am. She approves because I’m learning a lot. It’s very important that you don’t tell my parents anything!’
Ah Yee nodded but clung to my arm, still reluctant to let me go. To reassure her, I read her Big Aunt’s letter. Finally, she sighed and released her hold.
‘Take good care of yourself!’ she said. ‘Ah Yee won’t be there to look after you or cook what you like to eat. I always knew you’d grow up and leave one day. But you’re only twelve years old! Are you sure you’re going to be all right?’
As I let Ah Yee out of the flat, I said to her, ‘I think my father wants me back but Niang certainly doesn’t. Please, Ah Yee, let me stay at the academy for as long as possible. Whatever you do, don’t tell them where I am. I want to learn lots and lots of kung fu. Besides, I’m really, really happy there.’
9
Life at the Martial Arts Academy
During the rickshaw ride back to the academy, Iwas nervous and tense. In my mind, the envelopein my school bag took on the character of astick of dynamite about to explode. It was afterseven o’clock and there was a lot of traffic on thestreets. A truckload of Japanese soldiers in helmetsj rumbled by. One of them was holding a large Japanese flag, with its red rising sun against a sea of white. Further on I saw a policeman searching a bespectacled young man dressed in a long Chinese robe. The man stood motionless while being shoved around, holding his bicycle awkwardly with one hand. Beneath his broad-brimmed hat, his face was completely blank. I wondered what he had done to arouse the policeman’s suspicion, and began to sweat fiercely despite the chilly morning air. I felt scared even though I hardly knew what I had done wrong. Was I leading a double life?
I was so relieved to reach the academy safely that I almost fell on Grandma Wu when she opened the door and helped me take my bag inside.
‘Come in quickly!’ she said. ‘I’ve been waiting for you. Did you find it?’
‘Yes!’
‘Excellent! Come with me!’
In the security of her bedroom, I handed her the envelope from Big Aunt’s safe. She took a fresh piece of paper and copied a few numbers down.
‘Please ask David to come here,’ she said. ‘I need him to run an errand. I have some letters to send off by pigeon post and have no time for anything else this morning.’
I found David alone in his room playing his flute. ‘Grandma Wu wants you,’ I said. ‘Where are the others?’
‘They left a few minutes ago. Grandma Wu gave us money to buy breakfast from the street vendor today. I’ve been waiting for you to come back. Let’s join them there after we see Grandma Wu.’
Back in her bedroom, Grandma Wu handed David the paper with the code numbers she had just copied and said solemnly, ‘Please pass this to 0211 at once. Say nothing. Be careful!’
So just when I thought I was safe, we were back outside among the crowds, with a cold wind whipping up leaves and rubbish. I pulled my thick cardigan more firmly about my shoulders. Marat and Sam were joking with the noodle vendor on the corner.
‘This guy’s always here at the crack of dawn,’ David said to me. ‘When I’m up early, I see him walking past with his portable kitchen dangling from a bamboo pole perched on his shoulder.’
The bamboo pole was now on the ground. A stove with a boiler on top was bubbling away at one end. At the other end was a wooden cupboard with a dozen small drawers filled to the brim with noodles, rice, flour, dumpling skins, ground pork, diced shrimp, herbs, spices, chopped vegetables, bean curd, bamboo shoots and various condiments. My stomach rumbled in anticipation.
‘Five large flatbreads with deep-fried dough-sticks and five cups of soya milk, please,’ said Marat.
The noodle vendor nodded quickly and placed five sticks of twisted dough into the bubbling hot oil. The delicious smell of frying dough filled the air. He ladled hot soya milk into Marat’s thermos flask, then wrapped a large flatbread around each doughstick, securing the sandwiches with toothpicks, and packing the whole lot into five large sheets of newspaper.
‘There you are! Nice and hot! Fifty cents! Run home and eat your breakfast!’
‘It’s my treat!’ David interrupted, just as Marat was about to pay. David took some money out of his pocket and gave it to the noodle vendor.
While we walked away we heard his sing-song voice: ‘Large flatbreads! Deep-fried doughsticks! Hot soya milk!’
We were almost inside the academy when I remembered Grandma Wu’s instructions. ‘Didn’t you forget something, David?’
‘What?’
‘That sheet of paper for Agent 0211!’
‘I know. It’s done!’
‘Done? I didn’t see you give it to anyone!’
‘Of course not. She said to pass the paper secretly!’
The truth finally dawned. ‘You mean Agent 0211 is the noodle seller?’
‘That’s right!’
‘Who is he?’
‘I don’t know and I don’t want to know!’ David replied.
Grandma Wu poured the steaming soya milk into bowls, and we dunked the large flatbread-and-doughstick sandwiches into the milk before devouring them in large bites.
‘I’ve never had food like this before,’ I said between mouthfuls, as the five of us sat around the table in the kitchen. ‘Delicious!’
‘It’s peasants’ food, tested and true,’ Grandma Wu answered. ‘One can eat very well in Shanghai courtesy of the street vendors. But hurry and finish now because it’s almost time for school. Don’t forget your kung fu practice and kitchen chores tonight.’
I winced, as I knew her comment was directed mainly at me. Not being a natural athlete, I was finding it hard to perform even a single press-up, let alone 150 of them. After many attempts to push my body up and down a few times I’d increased my score to twenty, but it was tough going.
The side-bends, sit-ups, squats and dumb-bell circles were equally exhausting. I often tripped and fell using the skipping rope, and found myself wheezing and gasping for breath. The first few days, my arms and legs were so stiff I could hardly walk to the tram stop.
But in spite of the pain, I stuck to Grandma Wu’s prescribed routine. Six weeks passed, and finally I was able to grind out the required numbers. I gave up taking the tram. Instead, I sprinted to and from school with my school bag strapped to my back.
Every Sunday before classes, Grandma Wu measured our height, weight and muscle sizes. She gave each of us a notebook with a bright yellow cover to record our growth.
‘In the old days, yellow was known as the “imperial colour” because it could only be used by the emperor,’ Grandma Wu told us. ‘Nowadays anyone can wear that colour because Dr Sun Yat-sen toppled the Manchu d
ynasty in 1911. That’s when China became a republic. Let these yellow notebooks be your own “imperial yellow growth chart”.’
It was exhilarating to see myself becoming taller and stronger week by week. Then Grandma Wu mentioned one day that an article of mine in her Sunday newsletter had been singled out for praise by a trustee of the academy. ‘He asked whether CC is a pen name and wanted to congratulate the author personally,’ she said. ‘I didn’t introduce you or reveal your Chinese name in case he knows your father or stepmother.’
I blushed with pleasure but thanked her for being discreet. In my heart, I secretly hoped that I was changing into someone worthy of my father’s respect.
Spring was in full bloom and the days grew warmer and longer. Gradually I was included in the drills. I learned to scale the bamboo pole to the top of the wall and to run silently and swiftly. Every night I repeated to myself what Big Aunt had said to me before she went away: ‘Knowledge is power. Don’t let anyone drag you down. Motivate yourself to work hard and be strong always. Zj qiang bu xi! ()’
I heard nothing from my father, but Big Aunt and I sent messages regularly by pigeon post. Grandma Liu’s leg was healing slowly, although she was still bed-bound. It was a major event when Master Wu came to visit in April, bringing everyone sweaters hand-knitted by Big Aunt, as well as a basket of trained homing pigeons.
‘How tall you’ve all grown!’ he said when he saw us. ‘Especially you, CC! Look at those rosy cheeks! You’re up to my shoulders now.’
‘I’m no longer the shortest girl in my class!’ I said, beaming with pride at his compliment. ‘Yesterday, for the first time in my life, I won the 50-yard dash at school. The year before I had come in last! My friend Wu Chun-mei could hardly believe it. For a change, she came in second, but she wasn’t feeling well that day.’
‘Big Aunt will be so happy to hear this,’ he said. ‘She wants to know how your English is progressing. She misses you and asked me to take lots of photos of you.’
‘My English is getting better,’ I replied. ‘That’s because David, Marat and Sam speak English all the time. When we speak English on the streets it’s like we’re speaking a special private language. Nobody around us understands what we are talking about.’
‘Practice makes perfect! Language is power. You should get Marat to teach you Russian, French and Japanese as well. Knowing another language is like gaining another soul. If you knew every language in the world, you’d feel at home everywhere! What do the boys call you? CC or Ye Xian?’
‘Everyone calls me CC here, including Grandma Wu.’
‘See? I knew CC would suit you. It’s great to see how close you’ve become to my mother and the boys. The five of you are like one body with four limbs. Your aunt will be so proud.’
On Master Wu’s last Friday with us, the boys came home with red armbands around their sleeves, each marked with a giant letter of the alphabet. David’s armband had the letter ‘A’, Sam’s ‘C and Marat’s ‘R’.
‘Where did they come from?’ Grandma Wu asked, her voice unusually cold.
‘Our principal, Dr Hungate, called everyone into assembly today,’ David said. ‘He said that the Japanese are requiring all foreigners to wear armbands. Mine has the letter “A” to show I’m American. Sam’s is “G” because he is German and Marat’s is “R” because he is Russian.’
Grandma Wu and Master Wu looked at each other in dismay.
‘How come nobody got armbands at my school?’ I asked.
‘Probably because you’re Chinese,’ Grandma Wu replied. ‘You attend a Chinese school where all the students are Chinese. David, Sam and Marat go to an international school where most of the boys are foreigners. Chinese and Japanese boys are probably not required to wear armbands.’
‘That’s right!’ Sam said. ‘Everyone but the Chinese and Japanese boys at our school had to wear one. Dr Hungate himself wore the letter “B” because he’s British. Miss Van der Loot, our music teacher, wore the letter “D” because she is Dutch. I hate these armbands. It reminds me of the time in Berlin when my teacher forced me to pin the Star of David on my shirt. Why are the Japanese making us do this, Grandma Wu?’
‘I need to find out more before I can answer you,’ Grandma Wu told him. ‘Let’s hold a special meeting after dinner this evening in the alcove. Meanwhile, will you children excuse us and do your kung fu exercises without supervision today? Master Wu and I need to talk privately.’
‘I wonder what’s going on,’ Sam Said, as we walked to the gym to begin our exercises. ‘The two of them look really worried!’
‘I know!’ Marat replied. ‘Last night I went downstairs to get a drink of water and saw them talking in the living room. It was after 2 o’clock.’
In the gym we paired off. Sam and Marat decided to practise the White Crane style of high kicking, while David showed me the proper way of balancing myself when running on top of the barrel. I was thrilled at my progress and begged him to drain off the water, but he said I wasn’t ready yet. I climbed down and we started doing our warm-up exercises side by side.
‘Are you really American?’
‘I don’t know what I am,’ David said grimly. ‘I told you my father was American. He was born in Chicago and worked for a British bank in Shanghai. After a few years, he got fired for “going native” and marrying my mother, who was Chinese. So I’m half American and half Chinese. Does that make me American?’
‘That makes you American if you wish to be American!’
‘If you say so,’ David replied. ‘Not many people would agree with you. I’ve been called all sorts of names: Eurasian, half-caste, mixed race, za zhong ()…’
‘What does za zhong mean?’
‘The term means “people of mixed blood”.’ David hesitated for a moment, before adding bitterly, ‘You probably don’t know this. But za zhong also means “bastard” or “son of a bitch”.’
‘How awful! What about Sam and Marat?’
‘All three of us “mixed race bastards” are here because we have nowhere else to go. Perhaps that’s why we get along so well. And getting membership here makes us feel like we’re part of something. We understand each other in so many ways, as if we’ve finally found the brothers we never knew we had.’
Grandma Wu walked in then and said, ‘David and CC, stop chatting and concentrate on your exercises! You can talk later. Please have dinner ready half an hour earlier today. Tell Sam and Marat to help you. I’m calling a special meeting tonight.’
The boys and I cooked dinner, leaving Grandma Wu and Master Wu to continue their private talk. Sam and Marat went to the garden to pick chives, ginger and scallions, while David and I mixed flour with water to make dumpling skins. First we rolled the dough into long sausage shapes. Then we divided them into small lumps, which we rolled until they were paper thin. From these we cut three-inch round discs.
‘Tell me about your parents,’ I said to David as we worked.
He hesitated and kept rolling the dough without saying anything.
‘Don’t forget I’m an orphan too,’ I added. ‘My mama died and my papa threw me out of his house. Why were your parents killed?’
‘Are you sure you want to know?’
‘Please tell me! I won’t tell anyone!’
‘Swear.’
I placed my right hand on my chest and said, ‘I swear. If I tell anyone, I’ll be struck by lightning! Do you trust me now?’
‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘Yes, I do trust you. I don’t really like to talk about my parents. But you have a way of listening that makes me want to tell you things. One minute my father was defending my mother from the Japanese. The next minute he was dead…
‘It all started when my parents joined the underground after the invasion five years ago. I would ride along the river on my scooter and count the number of Japanese warships docked there. We’d pass this information on to Chiang Kai-shek’s secret agents.
‘As you know, Chiang Kai-shek () escaped to Chungki
ng soon after the Japanese invasion. For four years, things stayed more or less the same in Shanghai. The British and the Americans were still in power in the International Settlement where we lived. But everything changed on 7 December last year.’
‘The same day that Ivanov was taken away.’
‘Pearl Harbor Day – the day Japan killed two thousand Americans and destroyed eight American battleships and nearly two hundred aeroplanes. A few hours later on the same day, Japanese troops in Shanghai opened fire on British and American warships.’
‘Isn’t it strange that Japan would be attacking Pearl Harbor in Honolulu and warships in Shanghai on the same day?’ I asked. ‘Honolulu is so far from Shanghai!’
‘Both attacks were part of Japan’s grand plan to conquer the world and rule it with Germany. If their plan succeeds, everyone’s life will be affected, including yours and mine. My dad happened to be staying at a club by the Huang Pu River that night. He was woken around 4 o’clock by gunfire, and saw British sailors jumping from a flaming ship into the water. He ran into the street to have a better look and came across Jim Cuming, a British naval officer.
‘Jim had been on shore leave and was on his way back when he saw his ship being blown up. He begged my father for help.
‘I remember Dad bringing Jim home, burning his English sailor’s uniform and identity papers, then lending him some clothes. My father told me to take Jim out on the roof terrace, four doors down, to be met by Agent 0610. After a long wait in the dark, Agent 0610 finally revealed himself and took Jim away.
‘When I got home people were shouting. I looked through the keyhole and saw three Japanese officers questioning my parents. They wanted to know about the British naval officer who had been spotted getting off a rickshaw outside my parents’ flat.’
‘That must have been terrifying,’ I said. ‘I wonder how the Japanese found out so fast?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe the rickshaw puller told them. The whole of Shanghai is crawling with informers.
‘My parents wouldn’t answer any of their questions, so they started beating my mother with a gunto stick. My father kicked the stick away and tried to protect my mother. One of them took out a gun and shot him in the back. They arrested my mother and she died in jail three days later.’